But you know what Johnny will say. He will say that the Sons of the Confederate Veterans is not about lynchings. It's about preserving historic markers like the civil war memorials. Why do you want to destroy history you damn bigoted liberal?

You need a better argument, KKS. Because a memorial all by itself really isn't a threat to anyone. It's just an old sculpture.

The argument I'm trying to make is this:

1. The rash of Confederate memorials were erected as part of an effort to hoodwink the public about civil war history.
2. A false civil war narrative has been used and is being used to normalize the idea that armed rebellion against the US government is a legitimate form of political action. Also white supremacy is perfectly reasonable.
3. The US has always had extremists at the margins of our political life but now those extremist voices are suddenly in the mainstream.
4. We must actively oppose the extremists with facts and rational argument. That means possibly removing or adding context to signifiers of false civil war narratives in our public places.

I've been struggling to explain why "preserving the Union" was such an imperative for many educated Americans in the 1800s. Yesterday I stumbled on a comment that makes the point pretty well:

In the late 1780's, most people who studied politics assumed that democracy was impossible for anything bigger than a small city. In 1860, modern large-scale democratic and republican government was only 84 years old. Other attempts (2 examples: the first Republic of Colombia, and the United States of Central America) had already disintegrated into much smaller and much less politically stable countries.

The European powers hadn't stopped waiting for the whole "experiment" to collapse. It was widely assumed that a large group of people (such as the citizenry of a country as large as the U.S.) simply couldn't conduct peaceful elections - the losing parties would inevitably refuse to abide by outcomes that didn't go their way. Lincoln (and many others) CORRECTLY saw the secession crisis for what it was: a test of whether a large country can survive and remain democratic.

And I already explained above how the Secession Crisis was a test of democracy itself. If you get your way for 84 years and benefit from your commitment to federation for all that time, then to abandon that federation the moment your numbers can't dominate it even with an artificial advantage -- that's undemocratic. In effect, a minority was insisting on dictating to the majority.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

New Orleans is the latest city to start taking down historical but controversial monuments that many say celebrate slavery and the Confederacy. Angry opponents see the move as suppressing or rewriting history in the service of political correctness. William Brangham talks to Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute and Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Johnny_Reb would say the monuments to Confederate soldiers do not represent slavery or racism or Jim Crow or lynchings. He would say the monuments simply represent historical fact. Removing the monuments won't stop racism but it will make people less mindful of their heritage facts.

This conversation would be easier if you would just make the point you want to make. Seems like you are trying to say that official US documents from US authorities using the word "treason" to describe the Confederate rebellion aren't real or something.

"If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His [Jefferson Davis'] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."~Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase: Vol. III 1974 Shelby Foote trilogy pg. 1035.

I read Lincoln's words in the debate. From the vantage point of the present, these words are shameful and indefensible. But Lincoln, like all of us are, was a creature of his time.

I don't know whether Lincoln was shaping his words to suit his audience, or whether he genuinely could not grasp, in 1858, the concept that there was no honest reason to insist on the superiority of the 'white race'.

It may well be that, in order to achieve the goals he sought, Lincoln found it pragmatic or even necessary to appease his electorate. Politics is replete with such dirty deals and compromises.

It is debatable whether such pragmatism, in the long run, does more harm than good. Subsequent events suggest that it is questionable.

I read Lincoln's words in the debate. From the vantage point of the present, these words are shameful and indefensible. But Lincoln, like all of us are, was a creature of his time.

I don't know whether Lincoln was shaping his words to suit his audience, or whether he genuinely could not grasp, in 1858, the concept that there was no honest reason to insist on the superiority of the 'white race'.

It may well be that, in order to achieve the goals he sought, Lincoln found it pragmatic or even necessary to appease his electorate. Politics is replete with such dirty deals and compromises.

It is debatable whether such pragmatism, in the long run, does more harm than good. Subsequent events suggest that it is questionable.

"If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His [Jefferson Davis'] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."~Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase: Vol. III 1974 Shelby Foote trilogy pg. 1035.

The argument Chase was making was novel and, frankly, a bit crazy. He argued that the US had no citizens. Therefore, treason against the US was impossible.

Would Chase's argument have won if Davis' attorneys decided to use it? We will never know because Johnson pardoned him before his trial.

When Davis was indicted on a charge of treason in the federal court system, he stood before US Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who was acting as a circuit judge at the time. Chase preferred to dismiss the treason charges, but another judge, John Underwood, wouldn’t agree to it. Davis’s defense team argued that he had already been punished by the 14th Amendment, which stopped him from serving in public office in the future.

As a former US House and Senate member before the war, Davis had taken an oath of allegiance to support the Constitution of the United States. Under the 14th Amendment, anyone who has taken such an oath and engaged in insurrection against the US cannot hold public office. According to Davis’s lawyers, that inability to hold public office under the 14th Amendment constituted punishment for his rebellious actions. To prosecute him for treason for the same rebellious actions would constitute double jeopardy under the 5th Amendment. Therefore, his lawyers argued, he could not be legally tried for treason.

However, the Chief Justice gave the Davis team another interesting argument for dropping the treason charge. Chase asked if a person could be prosecuted for treason against the US if he were not a US citizen. Clearly, no. Then Chase asked if there was a reference to the concept of a US citizen in the Constitution. Again, there was not. A person could only be a citizen of his state. Therefore, by proving that the US had no citizens, Davis couldn’t be tried for treason against the US. It was a clever argument that has never been used again as far as we know.

You want to make a point about something. But instead of stating your point in your own words you post a link. That strikes me as a weasel. You should state your point and copypasta the bit from your link that illuminates your point.

I don't know if your point is about Lincoln or something else because I do not have ESP.

I don't have time to read a whole big thing right now.

From VanAllen's post it looks like Lincoln said whites were intellectually and morally superior to blacks. That is hardly surprising. Find me someone from that era who argued that whites and blacks were equals intellectually and morally. I would be curious about the evidence used to support that position. Certainly whites contributed more to science, technology, literature, and the arts up to that point.

The people in my college class were intellectually superior to the people in my high school class. But I never supported the idea that my high school peers ought to be enslaved.

Similarly, plenty of abolitionists viewed blacks as more limited intellectually yet still thought slavery was horrible.

Lincoln was opposed to slavery. But he was even more opposed to the loss of the "American experiment." Some revisionists try to argue that Lincoln was a hypocrite or talked out of both sides of his mouth. Maybe that is where you are going. But I'm not seeing a contradiction.

The case against Jefferson Davis was weird. Important documents had a habit of going missing.

It's unusual for a judge about to preside over a criminal matter to go out of his way to assist attorneys working for the defense by suggesting legal arguments. And c'mon, look at that argument and tell me it isn't nuts:

1. The US constitution doesn't define US citizenship.
2. Therefore treason against the US is impossible.

I say "nuts" because every country that has ever existed understands that traitors are real and not imaginary threats.

Chase's argument reminds me of a 5th grader future lawyer arguing, "Ma, I know you said I couldn't watch TV. But you didn't say I couldn't *listen* to TV."

I'm guessing Chase had to deal with death threats. Lucky for him that Johnson got him off the hook.

Attached Files:

That Arizona monument was put up by the "United Daughters of the Confederacy," a group that reminds me very much of Scientology. Very militant, self-righteous, not grounded in facts, willing to use threats and intimidation against critics, politically ambitious, likes to get academics fired, pays for fake academics to create a veneer of scholarship used to fool the public. The UDC are an intellectual cancer.

The UDC was established in September 10, 1894 at Nashville, Tennessee, by Caroline Goodlett and Anna Raines. According to the author Kristina DuRocher, the stated aims of the organization included "creating a social network, memorializing the war, maintaining a 'truthful record of the noble and chivalric achievements' of their veterans, and teaching the next generation 'a proper respect for and pride in the glorious war history'."[5]

In 1896, the organization established the Children of the Confederacy to teach the same values to the younger generation, through a mythical depiction of the Civil War and Confederacy designed to rewrite history. According to DuRocher, "Like the KKK's children's groups, the UDC utilized the Children of the Confederacy to impart to the rising generations their own white-supremacist vision of the future."[6]

The communications studies scholar W. Stuart Towns notes UDC's role "in demanding textbooks for public schools that told the story of the war and the Confederacy from a definite southern point of view". He adds that their work is one of the "essential elements [of] perpetuating Confederate mythology".[7]

That Arizona monument was put up by the "United Daughters of the Confederacy," a group that reminds me very much of Scientology. Very militant, self-righteous, not grounded in facts, willing to use threats and intimidation against critics, politically ambitious, likes to get academics fired, pays for fake academics to create a veneer of scholarship used to fool the public. The UDC are an intellectual cancer.

After the civil war when many southerners were broke as fuck, it was strangely easy to raise large sums if you asked people to donate to a memorial for fallen Confederate soldiers. Pride, patriotism, and not wanting to seem like a complete dick were powerful motivations to give. And thus the birth of a major charity scam.

In service to the scam the UDC re-wrote history, painting the Confederates as victims of an evil US Federal government. In that narrative, you really are a bastard if you turn down a request to give.

Considering that fake Confederate history is being used by Russia to incite sectarianism and race riots, we have to clean this shit up now as soon as we can.

Put yourself in the shoes of daddy's little girl. When Col. Beauregard Moneybags kicks off, she and her siblings are going to inherit a bundle. But if *all* the colonel's heirs get included at the reading of the will --including all the darker ones running around the plantation-- she may find herself inheriting the wind.

Plenty of white men fucked black slave women. I mean, c'mon. Who is going to let that opportunity pass? If sheep can't be guaranteed safety you know that pretty young slave girls aren't safe. So it's funny to hear neo-Confederates saying that segregation makes sense because people naturally want to be with their own kind.

The bullshit "Lost Cause" narrative apologizes for the wealthy slave traders and plantation owners who corrupted politicians and sank the nation into war. Subsequently we got people apologizing for the people who promoted the Lost Cause lies. These apologists claimed that southern white men had fragile egos that needed to be stroked or else the butthurt would never stop.

My fellow human beings, next time we hear people telling us lies are necessary because "OMG the butthurt," let's say, "No fuck the lies. Butthurt is no excuse. Plus butthurt goes away once people get a grip."

Bruce Catton argues that the myth or legend helped achieve national reconciliation between North and South. He concludes, "the legend of the lost cause has served the entire country very well", and he goes on to say:[26]

The things that were done during the Civil War have not been forgotten, of course, but we now see them through a veil. We have elevated the entire conflict to the realm where it is no longer explosive. It is a part of American legend, a part of American history, a part, if you will, of American romance. It moves men mightily, to this day, but it does not move them in the direction of picking up their guns and going at it again. We have had national peace since the war ended, and we will always have it, and I think the way Lee and his soldiers conducted themselves in the hours of surrender has a great deal to do with it.

Was Jefferson Davis an honest man? I would say, no. Because he claims that slaves were contented with their lot. However, if that were the case there would have been no need for laws forbidding slaves education and the opportunity to marry. Plus mountains of evidence that slaves were quite miserable being bought and sold like pieces of meat.

[The] servile instincts [of slaves] rendered them contented with their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of their abode with unmeasured riches. Their strong local and personal attachment secured faithful service ... never was there happier dependence of labor and capital on each other. The tempter came, like the serpent of Eden, and decoyed them with the magic word of 'freedom' ... He put arms in their hands, and trained their humble but emotional natures to deeds of violence and bloodshed, and sent them out to devastate their benefactors.
— Confederate President Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government(1881)[42]

"If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His [Jefferson Davis'] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."~Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase: Vol. III 1974 Shelby Foote trilogy pg. 1035.

I wasted a couple of hours trying to find the original source for this quote. It must exist, what with ellipses and brackets and all, indicating an editor (presumably Mr. Foote) being careful to indicate that which is original and that which has been added for clarity.

But nope. No such quote can be found in any of Salmon P. Chase's writings.

Turns out that Shelby Foote is not a historian. He is a popularizer of history and a story teller known for inserting little imagined conversations and thought bubbles into his narratives.

Johnny, I hope you will reflect upon the people feeding you Lost Cause info. They have recruited you as an unwitting foot soldier in their army that fights for things you don't understand. Because they don't want you to understand. If they did, they wouldn't lie about Salmon P. Chase's words.

But maybe I'm wrong. The Internets are big and my Google-fu fails me sometimes. If you can find the source document for Salmon P. Chase's quote, I will change my position and I will thank you for the correction.

I've been looking for pre-civil war evidence of this right but I'm not finding it. Sometimes I find quotes that seem to support the idea but the argument fizzles out once I see the quote in context.

John Marshall, a Virginian, a Founding Father, and a Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote the 1821 majority opinion in Cohens v Virginia which includes these words:

"It is very true that whenever hostility to the existing system shall become universal, it will be also irresistible. The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake resides only in the whole body of the people, not in any subdivision of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it."

Johnny_Reb, I hope you realize that the reason the Confederate monuments are in the news has very little to do with history. Nobody cares all that much whether old dead people were right or wrong. What they care about is rebellion against the US right now.

Far right groups in the US want to rebel in various ways against the Federal government. They're looking for feedback from all of us ordinary citizens. Are we largely tolerant of their ideas? Or are we going to fight back?

The civil war began several years before the attack on Fort Sumter. There are dox showing political agitation for armed rebellion after the War of 1812, maybe earlier. But I'm really hazy on that part of American history. Imma try to learn more because there may be similarities between pro-civil war agitation going on then and now --which most people don't take serious, though signs of organization and strength are increasing.

"If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His [Jefferson Davis'] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."~Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase: Vol. III 1974 Shelby Foote trilogy pg. 1035.

There are a bunch of Lost Cause books out there using this quote but I still can't find the original sauce. Example below with an annotation from me about the contradiction:

Chase says that "by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion," and so bringing Davis to trial for rebellion would be wrong.

But then he says it's "common knowledge" that Davis led an "armed uprising" aka a rebellion.

DIS A CONTRADICTION!!!!!!!!!!

Surely I am not the only person who can see this. Surely this is obvious to you, Johnny. Right?

"If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His [Jefferson Davis'] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."~Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase: Vol. III 1974 Shelby Foote trilogy pg. 1035.

There are a bunch of Lost Cause books out there using this quote but I still can't find the original sauce. Example below with an annotation from me about the contradiction: